


In the Quiet

by CosmicZombie



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, Kind of canon compliant?, M/M, Slow Burn, Star Gazing, basically they're both idiots but it's all okay in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 17:18:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15393606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CosmicZombie/pseuds/CosmicZombie
Summary: Zayn’s quiet, but he makes Harry’s head full of noise. Or, alternatively – “Harry and I never really spoke when I was in the band.”





	In the Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd told 16 year old emo me I would one day be writing One Direction fanfic, I think I might have punched you. And yet here I am, with my first ever Zarry. 
> 
> For the record, I bear no responsibility for this and Laura is entirely to blame. 
> 
> That being said, I'm actually pretty nervous about posting this. If you have a moment when you're done reading, it'd totally make my day if you left some feedback and told me what I'm doing right/wrong and if I should post the next chapter or not! 
> 
> DISCLAIMER: This is all lies. I promise.

I

 

In all truth, Harry hadn’t even noticed Zayn that much at first. He’d been easy not to notice, lost in the blur of performances and the rush of the X-Factor buzz around them. He wasn’t like the rest of them: Louis, who seemed to get louder and louder to deal with the increasing pressure; Niall, who got you to laugh at yourself in moments where doing so should have been impossible; Liam who filled every spare moments discussing plans for the future. Despite his striking looks, Zayn had initially just melded into the background, and, in a time where there was already too much to take in, Harry had barely noticed him at all. But by the time they were halfway through their third world tour, Harry was starting to find himself incapable of noticing anything but Zayn.

In retrospect, he supposed it had happened gradually. In a life filled with noise, Zayn’s quietness had always appealed to him. It wasn’t like Harry disliked the rush of life in the band – generally speaking, he loved it: he loved never being still; he loved hearing his own words drowning him out in sold-out stadiums; he loved being in icy Canada one moment and baking hot Australia the next. He loved the non-stop, loud, unpredictability of it all, but there were still moments when he couldn’t face another flight or interview, any more of Liam’s anxious advice, Louis’s noise, or Niall’s jokes – and these were the moments in which he sought the solace from Zayn’s unassuming silence.

Ever since the first time Harry had leant wearily against into them a few days into their first ever world tour, ears still ringing from screams and tears burning behind his eyes, Zayn had never questioned his presence. He never seemed to feel the need to fill the soft silences that ebbed naturally around them like soothing waters, smoothing down the rough edges of the loud rush of life around them. It reminded Harry of the quiet that filled his ears the first night back in Holmes Chapel after months in endless cities; how it was only then that he realised how loud everything always was. He knew that lots of people couldn’t stand the quiet – Louis, for example, couldn’t sit anywhere without having the TV or music on in the background – but Zayn exuded it as naturally as air.

Right from the beginning, Harry had always found himself intrigued as well as comforted Zayn’s quiet: silence was harder to work out than words, even if words were hardly ever straightforward. But Harry had this theory that people were silent because they were listening – either to what was going on around them, or to what was going on in their heads. He’d never been able to decide which it was, with Zayn. Harry himself wasn’t often quiet, because he preferred to act on his thoughts rather than dwell too long on them. Other people were a different matter, though – he could dwell on other people indefinitely, and, increasingly, Zayn most of all.

Harry was sure that over his years in 1D he had exchanged fewer words with Zayn than anyone else – but somehow, by the start of their _Four_ tour, he felt closer to Zayn than anyone else in the band, or anywhere ever. He wasn’t someone Harry had ever expected to be close to: Zayn was reserved and understated, and intensely private – the complete opposite to Harry. But nonetheless, Harry slowly found himself inexplicably drawn to Zayn, and he supposed this was why it was only him who noticed there was something wrong.  

It started with the silences changing: Harry would come back to the bus after a tireless day of press and recording and collapse against Zayn on the sofa, but instead of finding himself calmed by the other man’s quiet, for the first time since knowing Zayn, he suddenly felt isolated by it instead. For years, he’d watched how masterfully Zayn could utilise his silence to protect himself from everything going on around him, to put a distance between himself and difficult situations. But never with Harry – not until now. Something about the whole thing was suddenly off, and Harry couldn’t quite put his finger on exactly what. Whenever he flopped down beside Zayn, Zayn would sling his arm automatically round Harry’s shoulders and ruffle his hair, then continued reading whatever novel he had that week with his arm still there like always – but the silence suddenly started to feel like a wall between them rather than around them.

 “What’re you reading?” Harry asked, the first time it happened. He spoke lowly, feeling as though he was breaking a rule by speaking into the quiet between them.

“Frankenstein,” Zayn replied quietly, not looking up from the page. His arm was warm around Harry’s shoulders, but it didn’t feel comforting the way it normally did. It was too heavy, and Harry shifted around restlessly under its weight, trying in vain to find normality.

“Good?” he asked, even though he knew as he spoke it wasn’t what he really wanted to say.

Zayn nodded mutely, and turned the page. Deciding to chalk it up to the effects of a shitty day, Harry closed his eyes and leant against Zayn’s side as habit dictated. The cotton of Zayn’s Pink Floyd t-shirt was soft against his cheek and the familiar scents of sandalwood, citrus and a slight hint of tobacco filled Harry’s nostrils whenever he drew a breath in – but against his cheek he could feel the beat of Zayn’s heart. It was too fast to be calming, too irregular to lull Harry to sleep the way it normally did. It reminded him too much of his own.

Harry lay there with his eyes shut for twenty minutes, hoping that somehow everything would meld back into normality. When it didn’t, he sat up, running a hand through his rumpled hair, and saying hoarsely, “I’m starving, gunna go see if Liam’s back with pizza yet.”

Zayn didn’t look up from his page, just grunted in acknowledgement and relinquished his arm from Harry’s shoulders. “Sure.”

“Want any?” Harry asked, nudging his knee against Zayn’s in attempt to get him to look up.

“Nah, I’m good thanks,” Zayn replied, eyes flickering briefly away from his novel and catching Harry’s for a split second before retreating back to the pages. Harry didn’t know what he expected to find in them, but it certainly wasn’t for them to survey him with almost exactly the same quiet attention as usual. Examining his own disappointment, Harry supposed he was hoping for some acknowledgement in them that there was something different, but there was nothing but the usual discerning hazel – and that was somehow what worried him most of all. 

 

~

 

Harry had been able to tell himself – even if he hadn’t really believed it – that everything was okay until Ohio. It was six weeks into their world tour, and it had been a claustrophobic, muggy sort of day. The clammy, sunless heat had stuck to his skin all through a long day of interviews, and even though Harry had showered and pulled on fresh clothes when they got to the venue, he didn’t feel particularly refreshed. Tiredness was dragging at his temples, making his eyes ache as he flicked aimlessly through the copy of Mojo that was on the coffee table in their dressing room, leg bouncing up and down restlessly. It was still half an hour until they were due on stage, and he couldn’t settle on anything: it felt as though he’d downed three shots of espresso.

“What’s up with you?” Louis demanded, when Harry tossed the magazine back onto the table and flopped back onto the sofa with a long sigh. Louis was in the middle of getting his hair done, but he pushed Lou’s hand aside to look round at Harry, the smallest hint of concern colouring his sharp gaze. “You’ve barely sat still for two minutes since we got in here.”

“Dunno,” Harry shrugged truthfully, because he genuinely didn’t know why he’d felt so on edge all afternoon. The press of everything had just seemed closer than usual, and he hadn’t found a moment to even catch Zayn’s gaze all day, just to ground himself.

“Well go and take a walk or something, you’re making me feel nervous for fuck’s sake,” Louis complained, turning back around and letting Lou resume the final touches on his hair. “I haven’t felt nervous since we stopped using that stupid pyrotechnic shit onstage.”

Deciding a walk was as good as any way to shake off his restlessness, Harry made aimlessly for the bathroom down the corridor to splash cold water on his face, mulling over the vague intention of finding Zayn afterwards. The latter been silent all day, even when directly addressed in interviews, his eyes constantly downcast. Harry had barely seen him since they’d arrived at the venue a couple of hours earlier – he’d just sort of melted into the rush and disappeared. Even when Zayn had been there physically, it seemed as though it was only in body – the rest of him was lost somewhere elsewhere. His eyes hadn’t focused on anything to connect him to the present, but had just held the space between other people’s gazes and the horizon.

Letting out a long sigh, Harry pushed a weary hand through his shoulder-length curls and opened the bathroom door.

It took him a moment to register that it wasn’t empty, and several more to register that it was Zayn, standing there in front of the mirrors.

He was almost unrecognisable, hunched up over the sink, visibly shaking, staring blankly into the depths of the sink below him as though it was an empty night’s sky.  

Harry’s heart plummeted to a halt in his chest as he took in the scene, pounding painfully in his throat. His palms suddenly felt sweaty against his jeans and he didn’t know what to say.

“Zayn?” he offered at last, wincing at how loud and unfeeling his voice sounded in the deafening silence of the bathroom.

Zayn’s freshly-styled hair fell loosely around his face, hiding his expression, but Harry could see the way his knuckles clenched fiercely where they gripped the sides of the art-deco sink.

“Zayn,” Harry repeated, as quietly as he could manage this time. Tentatively, he stepped forwards and hesitated for a moment before placing a hand gently on Zayn’s shoulder. Zayn was wearing a tight black top with the sleeves cut off, and Harry could feel both the softness of the cotton and the hardness of the clenched muscles under warm skin. His heart was pounding in his chest so fast he felt sick. Zayn was always okay. Liam got freaked out about things like people not liking them, Louis got bumptious and overly loud when he was nervous, Niall would full on panic every once in a while – but Zayn was always silently okay. But maybe, now that Harry thought about it, being okay wasn’t that straightforward – because he had never seen anyone else broken down like this. Maybe this was the price of seeming okay all the time. Maybe there was no such thing.

“Zayn,” Harry said again, louder this time to drown out his rushing thoughts, trying to keep the fearfulness out of his voice but not quite managing to eradicate the hint of pleading that coloured it. He gripped Zayn’s arm slightly more firmly, feeling the warmth of Zayn’s ink, and Zayn let out trembling breath that should have been almost inaudible, but instead echoed horribly off the walls around them. The sound of it made Harry’s heart drop into his stomach, and he bit his tongue, resisting the urge to say “Please”.

“Harry – ” Zayn’s voice was too quiet, almost lost under the tremor of his body. “I’m okay.”

“But – ” Harry faltered, not sure what to say to what was so blatantly a lie. He gripped Zayn’s arm tighter, willing him to look up and to see that familiar gaze unchanged. Willing Zayn to meet his gaze so that – somehow – he might be able to pull him out of the depths, the way that he always could for Harry when Harry was lost in a sea of unknown faces and noise. “Please. Tell me what’s wrong. Zayn. Or – tell me what I can do,” he swallowed, looking down. His feet, clad in his favourite moleskin boots, stood side by side with Zayn’s pointy black ones, the ones they’d picked out the last time they had a day off and went shopping in Bristol. It had just been the two of them because the others were off doing other things, and miraculously the paparazzi hadn’t clocked where they were and it had felt like they were just themselves, like they existed outside all the noise and rush of life after the X-Factor. Harry still had a Polaroid from that day tacked up by his Fleetwood Mac poster in the bus, of the two of them wearing stupid hats in Urban Outfitters and pulling faces like they were just any twenty-something year olds.  

 “Do you need me to go?” Harry asked quietly, swallowing the memory. It stuck in his throat. “I’ll go,” he murmured, “if you need me to go.”

Almost imperceptibly, Zayn nodded. His knuckles still gripped the sink so tight they were turning whiter than the ceramic, and the tremors still shook his slight frame. Harry didn’t need to touch his spine to see how rigid it was, or how prominent it suddenly seemed in his small frame. Biting his tongue, Harry rubbed his thumb faintly across the patch of skin under his own hand, hoping that – somehow – that tiny movement conveyed what he wanted to say but couldn’t articulate, and reluctantly dropped his grasp, backing towards the door.

As he closed it behind him, his heart was still pounding as though he was falling.

 

~

 

Zayn didn’t appear backstage until five minutes before they were due to go on. He looked as cool and unflustered as ever, bottle of water in one hand, earplugs hanging round his neck as he muttered a vague excuse to Paul. Harry, standing over with Niall close to the stage, felt relief flood his whole body at the simple sight of him. He’d been moments away from charging back down the corridor, but the Zayn standing in front of him now could have been a different person. The only hint of what had passed between them earlier was the slight pallor of his cheeks, and the fact his hair was slightly more tousled than usual, but anyone else but Harry wouldn’t have guessed it was anything but intentional.

“Alright?” Harry threw in Zayn’s direction as casually as possible, not wanting to reveal the anxiety that had been bubbling through him since he’d left Zayn alone.

Zayn’s eyes flickered to his for a split second for the first time that day, impassive and framed with long dark lashes, and he nodded as though Harry had simply asked him if he could borrow his phone charger or something equally trivial. Harry didn’t know whether he was reassured or unsettled by the complete impassivity of it – but he didn’t have time to dwell on it, because the lights went down in a storm of noise and they were being called to get onstage, and Harry lost sight of Zayn in the rush of screams and lights as Liam propelling him firmly but not unkindly onstage.

Onstage, it was easier not to remember. For Harry, nothing about their lifestyle could bear the thrill of playing live music. The concerts were a strange, timeless alternate reality in which reality no longer mattered. In that little bubble, anything could be real for a few hours when it couldn’t be anywhere else. All the mundane realities like which press call they were doing tomorrow or the fact Louis still hadn’t cleaned his side of the bus or the fact Harry hadn’t seen his Mum in three months didn’t exist anymore. Playing music was a bizarrely freeing king of limbo in which nothing but the moment mattered, and Harry loved that about it.

This was one of the few occasions where Harry couldn’t quite lose himself in the immediacy of it. Whenever the lights flashed and plunged them into temporary darkness, he couldn’t stop seeing Zayn’s shaking body hunched in on itself alone in the silence of the bathroom imprinted on the back of his eyelids. With every thrum of the bass, he heard in it Zayn’s wretched “Harry, I’m okay” until his head was wringing with it. He missed the start of his solo in WMYB and avoided Liam’s questioning and irritated glance. Instead, he danced closer to Zayn, watching for signs of distress out of the corner of his eye – but he found none. Zayn’s performance was as seamless and unreadable as always.

Just to be on the safe side, Harry tousled Zayn’s hair every time he strode past, danced particularly outrageously, told the most cringe-worthy jokes he knew of, and by the last song, Zayn was grinning at him as they harmonized – not the charming, media-approved smile a million people could see whenever they wanted, but the genuine, wide grin that made his nose scrunch up at the sides and his eyes glitter. It always made Harry feel as though he’d achieved something.

 

~

 

“Great show, lads,” Louis cheered breathlessly as they flopped into their dressing room after the show’s end, ears still ringing from the screams. He flung himself into a chair and downed a bottle of water. “Who’s coming out tonight? Lou says the club downtown is epic, I thought we should go give it a shot. If it’s good we can get totally hammered, and if it’s bad, we can just get totally hammered anyway. It’s a win-win situation.”

“I’m in,” Niall agreed enthusiastically, towelling his hair dry. “Zayn?”

Zayn paused, water in hand. His hair was waving slightly from the sweat, accentuating the sharpness of his cheekbones with its softness. “Think I might have a chilled one tonight,” he said coolly, fiddling with the cap from his bottle of water.

Niall shrugged, tossing the towel into the chair beside him. “Liam? Harry?”

“Sure, why not,” Liam sighed, catching sight of Louis opening his mouth in preparation for a persuasive lecture on the importance of going out and enjoying yourself. “But I’m not getting as hammered as Louis.”

“Small victories. I’ll take it,” Louis grinned triumphantly, chucking his empty water bottle in the direction of the bin in the corner. “Haz?”

“Sorry, I, uh, don’t much feel like going out. Think I’ll stay in too,” Harry said casually, taking a long gulp of water. His eyes sought Zayn’s, but Zayn seemed to be deliberately avoiding his gaze, still turning the cap of his water bottle over and over between his fingers.  

“God, Styles, are you hitting a midlife crisis or something?” Louis demanded incredulously, staring at him in disbelief. “Since when do you not feel like going out? You’re the only one I can count on, you can’t abandon me.”

Harry smiled, taking another mouthful of water. “Sorry, Lou. Promise it’s not a midlife crisis. I’ll be there next time for sure.”

Louis looked sceptical, but seemed to decide not to press Harry further, because he changed the subject to how he was going to once and for all beat Niall’s record for the most shots drunk in an evening no matter what it took. Harry tuned them out, frowning as he watched Zayn staring at the half-drunk bottle of water in his hands and looking as though he was somewhere else. The problem with Zayn was that even his silences were silent. Four years sharing tour buses and hugs and impossibilities, and Harry still couldn’t decipher what was going on in them. He usually liked to think he was quite good with working people out that way, but Zayn had always been different. Even the people he let in, he didn’t really let in. Harry sometimes wondered if he even let himself in. If any of the others went quiet, Harry would instantly be able to tell what it was about – whether the silence was an I’m-really-tired silence or a fuck-off-and-leave-me-alone one. But not with Zayn. Zayn was like watching a foreign film without subtitles.

Not long after Louis bounded off to round up Lou and some of the crew for going out, Zayn slipped quietly out of the room, still dodging Harry’s questioning gaze.

“Does Zayn ever talk to you about stuff?” Harry asked Liam lowly, staring in the direction of the door Zayn had just shut behind him.

Liam glanced up, frowning slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing – I – he just doesn’t say a lot, y’know?” Harry fumbled with the words, unsure of what it was he was really trying to get them to mean.

Liam smiled wryly. “Yeah, after four years I have kinda noticed that.”

Harry rolled his eyes and grinned reluctantly. “I just – I can’t imagine what it’s like.”

“It’s how he’s always been, Haz, why are you worrying about this now? It’s just his way.”

“I’m not worrying about him,” Harry protested – but ten minutes later when the others had all set off to the club and he was left sitting restlessly alone in the empty dressing room staring at the seat Zayn had sat in earlier, he knew that was a lie. It was just hard to explain to Liam, who thought that Zayn never talked to anyone, but Harry had always thought – perhaps naively – that Zayn had talked to him, that out of everyone, Harry was the one he was the one he was least silent with. Only now Harry felt as though he was just as locked out as everyone else, with no idea how he’d got there, or why.

Deciding that doing nothing was no longer an option, Harry showered speedily, redressed, and grabbed his jacket before meandered over from the venue to the hotel. The evening air was soft and shadowed, stars glimmering dully above the endless glare of city lights, lost and faraway in all the bright lights. Harry ignored them, and ducked into the building where the harsh luminescence of the foyer assaulted his gaze. He collected his keys from reception even though he had no intention of using them, and took the stairs instead of the elevator, suddenly needing to put more time between the present and asking Zayn to let him in.

The burn of his lungs distracted him from the rush of his thoughts enough that by the time he was standing outside Zayn’s closed door, he felt almost calm. The hotel corridor stretched away behind him along with everything else, lit with ambient orange light that cast everything in long, soft shadows like autumnal sunlight.

Breaking the silence, Harry raised his hand and knocked softly on the door.                      


End file.
